Beatles fan’s lost letter turns to story of pandemic hope
Like so many victims of COVID-19, Brazilian Karlo Schneider never got to say goodbye to his family. Unlike most, he managed to get them a message a year after he died.
Schneider’s family, who describe him as a die-hard romantic with an infectious love of life, kissed him farewell when the Brazilian hotel manager left for work one morning in February 2021, and never held him again.
Schneider came down with coronavirus symptoms that day, and stayed at the hotel to avoid infecting his family. Their only contact after that was in calls from his sick bed and one socially distanced look – the badly ill father in his car on his way to the hospital, his wife and three kids waving from the house.
But Schneider, who died at 40 that March, delivered his loved ones a letter a year later, with a little help from his friends, the Beatles and a viral video.
The story starts at a dinner party in 2006, when Schneider, then expecting his first child, got the idea for he and his friends to write letters to his unborn daughter to open on her 15th birthday.
A passionate Beatles fan with hundreds of rare records, he stashed the letters inside his most precious possession: his vinyl collection.
“He...